At 2 minutes, 20 seconds into this C-Span video clip, Rep. Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania explains how the Federal Reserve told Congress members about a "tremendous draw-down of money market accounts in the United States, to the tune of $550 billion dollars." According to Kanjorski, this electronic transfer occured over the period of an hour or two.

Here is a transcript of what Kanjorski says in the video:

"On Thursday Sept 15, 2008 at roughly 11 AM The Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous draw down of money market accounts in the USA to the tune of $550 Billion dollars in a matter of an hour or two.

Money was being removed electronically.

The treasury tried to help with $150 Billion.

But could not stem the tide.

It was an electronic run on the banks

The treasury intervened but had they not closed down the accounts they estimated that by 2 PM that afternoon. Within 3 hours. $5.5 Trillion would have been withdrawled and collapsed and within 24 hours the world economy."

It WAS Sept. 18 and it was a direct result of the failure of Lehman Bros. on the 15th. That precipitated a Money Market Mutual fund to “break the buck” given their exposure to Lehman Bros. What followed was many institutional AND retail (average Joes) investors to simply MOVE out of one type of Money Market funds to a US Treasury Money Market fund comprised entirely of US Treasury securities.This is why in short order the yield on these short term US Treasury securities went close to zero,then slightly below zero yield. People were saying “I want return OF capital more than return on capital.”
Please know I am a devout conservative, deeply concerned about the current government and worried sick about our country’s future, but this was NOT an October surpirse OR George Soros or anything else malicious. It was simply a result of the mortgage meltdown and mortgage securities owned by Bear Stearns which failed in March and then Lehman Bros. Keep in mind at about the same time the government took over Fannie and Freddie and AIG.

I am absolutely convinced this was caused by Democraps on the Banking committee giving insider intel to Hedge Fund managers ... Charles Schumer comes to mind, and his sparking the run on Indymac to get the financial ciris rolling in time for the fall election cycle.

21
posted on 02/16/2009 7:19:27 PM PST
by MHGinTN
(Believing they cannot be deceived, they cannot be convinced when they are deceived.)

See that thread for a longer discussion about: on which day what funds were affected, what the actual sequence of events was, how the weekend affected Wall Street’s reaction to news on Thursday, Friday, Monday, and Tuesday.

Freeper philman_36 has some amazing research.

23
posted on 02/16/2009 7:25:15 PM PST
by Robert A. Cook, PE
(I can only donate monthly, but socialists' ABBCNNBCBS continue to lie every day!)

I had read awhile back that it happened on Sep 15 too. Too many questions, how many MM accounts, whose, etc. Much could be put into secret Swiss accounts. Seems they would know who was withdrawing and 'where', but I am uninformed and just 'meandering' here.

This was a Financial Terrorist Attack on the seventh anniversary of 9/11. Aren't the American people entitled to know who was behind the run on the banks?

Why was this kept from the American people before the most important election in US history? And why did Obama treat it as an unimportant incident - accusing McCain of grandstanding when McCain left the campaign trail and flew to Washington? Remember what President Hussein said? "They'll call me if they need me."

Someone, apparently someone in Asia, wants dollars. A LOT of dollars. There is a forced-liquidation event underway that is massive, it is against all asset classes and it is spreading.

It originated at approximately 7:15 CT this evening and originated out of Asia somewhere. All of the primary currency crosses got hit at once - Euro, Pound, Yen - all weakened dramatically against the dollar and it is still going on. The Asian stock markets got walloped at the same time in coordinated waves of forced selling.

At the same time the US futures markets got nailed as well, down some six handles on the /ES in a near-vertical drop. While this sounds “not that big” to move these markets in a coordinated fashion like this is a trillion-dollar enterprise - this is not some small company that went bankrupt, or even a large company.

There is no news coverage at the present time identifying the source of this but it is not small and contrary to some reports it is not “automatic selling”; this is forced liquidation.

Folks, if this translates into Eastern Europe where there are severe instabilities already brewing literally everything in the financial world could come apart “all at once.”

The worse news is that if this happens Bernanke will have killed us (in the US) by extending those swap lines all over the planet during the last six months. These will become utterly uncollectable and they are massive, in the many hundreds of billions of dollars.

To those who are reading this, I hope if you’re in the markets you are prepared for extreme levels of violence. You must expect that the authorities will try to arrest the destruction if they are able, but you must also be prepared for the possibility that we have reached a “critical mass” point beyond which “duck and cover” is the only winning strategy.

Unfortunately.

That comes from Karl Denninger.

Will this reverse before our markets open in the morning, or are we going to see something really ugly??

“Maggie” of Maggie’s Notebook, Jim Simpson (”...Manufactured Crisis”), and I are stirring up a bit of a campaign to call members of the Kanjorski committee (and other Congressmen/women). Can you/FReepers help?

Please FReepmail me or send to arlenwilliams”at”yahoo.com, if you would like further information about how we can try to get information from Congress. Rub Kanjorski’s face in it, if he was blowing smoke, or find out where he was telling the truth.

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